Henrik Ibsen Quotes

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney.

You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

Oh, life would be all right if we didn't have to put up with these damned creditors who keep pestering us with the demands of their ideals.

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

It’s a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.

NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I'm to get to know myself and the world outside. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.

Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrafice his honor for the one he loves. Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.

The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

To see one's goal and to drive toward it, steeling one's heart, is most uplifting.

And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!

There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.

Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

In the decisive moment I won the victory over myself. I chose to live. And believe me, it takes courage to choose life under those circumstances.

There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life

Don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.

Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.

Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much of a man

There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk.

The man-at-arms is the only man.

Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.

I'm inclined to think we are all ghosts-every one of us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. Its all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.

I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority

But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.

Mrs LINDE: When you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it second time.

Helmer: "Before all else you are a wife and a mother." Nora: "That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being."

I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.